A few moments later, as he stood at the window in the parlour, looking
at the waving elm-boughs and lazily wondering how the moon could be so
bright when there were so many clouds, the soft swish of a woman's
skirt sounded close to his ear. As he turned, the frightened "Oh!"
and the little gasp of surprised femininity revealed Sarah, standing
near the table in the centre of the room. Even at that distance and
in the dark he was aware of a difference in her, a subtle element of
personality not present before.
"Did I frighten you?" he asked, coming nearer.
"No, not very much. Only I thought nobody would be here. I--I--wanted
some place to breathe in; it seems so tight and close in the house." As
she spoke, a violent blast of wind drove the shutters against the side
of the house and rubbed together the branches of the elm until they
creaked dismally. She pressed her face against the glass and stared out
into the dark.
"Don't you love it?" she questioned, almost eagerly.
Willard shook his head dubiously. "Don't know. Looks pretty cool. If it
gets much higher, I shouldn't care to walk far."
She took her old place by the table again, but soon left it, and
wandered restlessly about the room. As she passed him he was conscious
of a distinct physical impression--a kind of electric presence. She
seemed to gather and hold about her all the faint light of the cold
room, and the sweep of her skirt against his foot seemed to draw him
toward her. Suddenly she stopped her irregular march.
"Hear it sing!" she whispered.
The now distinct voice of the wind grew to a long, minor wail, that
rose and fell with rhythmic regularity. As she paused with uplifted
finger near him, Willard felt with amazement a compelling force,
a personality more intense, for the time, than his own. Then, as
the blast, with a shriek that echoed for a moment with startling
distinctness from every side, dashed the elm branches against the house
itself, she turned abruptly and left the room. "Stay here!" she said
shortly, and, resisting the impulse to follow her, he obeyed. In a
few moments she returned with a heavy shawl wrapped over her head and
shoulders.
"Hold the window open for me," she said, "I'm going out." He attempted
remonstrance, but she waved him impatiently away. "I can't get out of
the door--mother's locked it and taken the key, but you can hold up the
window while I get out. Oh, come yourself, if you like! But nothing can
happen to me."
Mechanically he held open the window as she slipped out, and, dragging
his overcoat after him, scrambled through himself. She was waiting for
him at the corner of the house, and as he stumbled in the unfamiliar
shadows, held out her hand.
"Here, take hold of my hand," she commanded. Her cool, slim grasp was
strangely pleasant, as she hurried along with a smooth, gliding motion,
wholly unlike her indifferent gait of the day before.
Once out of the shelter of the house, the storm struck them with full
force, and Willard realised that he was well-nigh strangled in the
clutches of a genuine Maine gale.
"What folly!" he gasped, crowding his hat over his eyes and struggling
to gain his wonted consciousness of superiority. "Come back instantly,
Miss Storrs! Your mother----"
"Come! come!" she interrupted, pulling him along.
He stared at her in amazement. Her eyes were wide open and almost
black with excitement. Her face gleamed like ivory in the cold light.
Her lips were parted and curved in a happy smile. Her slender body
swayed easily with the wind that nearly bent Willard double. She seemed
unreal--a phantom of the storm, a veritable wind-spirit. Her loosened
hair flew across his face, and its touch completed the strange thrill
that her hand-clasp brought. He followed unresistingly.
"Aren't--you--afraid--of--the--woods?" he gasped, the gusts tearing the
words from his lips, as he saw that she was making for the thick growth
of trees that bordered the cliff. Her high, light laughter almost
frightened him, so weird and unhuman it came to him on the wind.
"Why should I be afraid? The woods are so beautiful in a storm! They
bow and nod and throw their branches about--oh, they're best of all,
then!"
A sweeping blast nearly threw him down, and he instinctively dropped
her hand, since there was no possible feeling of protection for her,
her footing was so sure, her balance so perfect. As he righted himself
and staggered to the shelter of the tree under which she was standing,
he stopped, lost in wonder and admiration. She had impatiently thrown
off the shawl and stood in a gleam of moonlight under the tree. Her
long, straight hair flew out in two fluttering wisps at either side;
her straight, fine brows, her dark, long lashes, her slender, curved
mouth were painted against her pale face in clear relief. Her eyes were
widely open, the pupils dark and gleaming. It seemed to his excited
glance that rays of light streamed from them to him. "Heavens! she's a
beauty! If only I could catch that pose!" he said under his breath.
"Come!" she called to him again, "we're wasting time! I want to get to
the cliff!" He pressed on to her, but she slipped around the tree and
eluded him, keeping a little in advance as he panted on, fighting with
all the force of a fairly powerful man against the gale that seemed
to offer her no resistance. It occurred to him, as he watched with
a greedy artist's eye the almost unnatural ease and lightness of her
walk, that she caught intuitively the turns of the wind, guiding along
currents and channels unknown to him, for she seemed with it always,
never against it. Once she threw out both her arms in an abandon of
delight, and actually leaned on the gust that tossed him against a
tree, baffled and wearied with his efforts to keep pace with her, and
confusedly wondering if he would wake soon from this improbable dream.
Speech was impossible. The whistling of the wind alone was deafening,
and his voice was blown in twenty directions when he attempted to call
her. Small twigs lashed his face, slippery boughs glided from his
grasp, and the trees fled by in a thick-grown crowd to his dazed eyes.
To his right, a birch suddenly fell with a snapping crash. He leaped
to one side, only to feel about his face a blinding storm of pattering
acorns from the great oak that with a rending sigh and swish tottered
through the air at his left.
"Good God!" he cried in terror, as he saw her standing apparently
in its track. A veer in the gale altered the direction of the great
trunk, that sank to the ground across her path. As it fell, with an
indescribable, swaying bound she leaped from the ground, and before
it quite touched the earth she rested lightly upon it. She seemed
absolutely unreal--a dryad of the windy wood. All fear for her left
him. As she stood poised on the still trembling trunk, a quick gust
blew out her skirt to a bubble on one side, and drove it close to her
slender body on the other, while her loose hair streamed like a banner
along the wind. She curved her figure towards him and made a cup of
one hand, laying it beside her opened lips. What she said he did not
hear. He was rapt in delighted wonder at the consummate grace of her
attitude, the perfect poise of her body. She was a figure in a Greek
frieze--a bas-relief--a breathing statue.
Unable to make him hear, she turned slightly and pointed ahead. He
realised the effect of the Wingless Victory in its unbroken beauty. She
was not a woman, but an incarnate art, a miracle of changing line and
curve, a ceaseless inspiration.
Suddenly he heard the pound and boom of the surf. In an ecstasy
of impatience she hurried back, seized his hand, and fairly
dragged him on. The crash of the waves and the wind together
took from him all power of connected thought. He clung to her
hand like a child, and when she threw herself down on her
face to breathe, he grasped her dress and panted in her ear:
"We--can't--get--much--farther--unless--you--can--walk--the--Atlantic!"
She smiled happily back at him, and the thickness of her hair, blown
by the wind from the ocean about his face, brought him a strange,
unspeakable content.
"Shall we ever go back?" he whispered, half to himself. "Or will you
float down the cliff and wake me by your going?"
Her wide, dark eyes answered him silently. "It is like a dream,
though," her high, sweet voice added. And then he realised that she had
hardly spoken since they left the house. The house? As in a dream he
tried vaguely to connect this Undine of the wood with the girl whose
body she had stolen for this night's pranks. As in a dream he rose
and followed her back, through the howling, sweeping wind. Her cold,
slim hand held his; her light, shrill voice sang little snatches of
songs--hymns, he remembered afterward. As the moonlight fell on her, he
wondered dreamily why he had thought her too thin. And all the while he
fought, half-unconsciously, the resistless gale, that spared him only
when he yielded utterly.
The house gleamed white and square before them. Silently he raised the
window for her. He had no thought of lifting her in. That she should
slip lightly through was of course. The house was still lighted, and he
heard the creaking of her mother's rocking-chair in the bedroom over
his head. He looked at his watch. "Does her mother rock all night?" he
thought dully, for it was nearly twelve. She read his question from the
perplexed glance he threw at her.
"She's sitting up to watch the door so that I sha'n't get out," she
whispered quietly, without a smile. "Good-bye." And he stood alone in
the room.
Until late the next morning he wandered in strange, wearied, yet
fascinating dreams with her. Vague sounds, as of high-pitched
reproaches and quiet sobbing, mingled with his morning dreams, and
when, with aching head and thoroughly bewildered brain, he went to
his late breakfast, Mrs. Storrs served him; only as he left for the
train, possessed by a longing for the great, busy city of his daily
work, did he see her daughter, walking listlessly about the house. Her
freckled face was paler than ever, her half-closed eyes reddened, and
her slight, awkward bow in recognition of his puzzled salute might have
been directed to some one behind him. Only his aching head and wearied
feet assured him that the strangest night of his life had been no dream.